Just submitted my paperwork for the last of my student loans. I'm glad I'll be done with it, but I am really not looking forward to having to pay it all off especially if I'm on a resident salary. I'm lucky in that my husband can provide for us otherwise, and that I don't have any undergraduate debt, but it's a scary thing to look ahead to.

In happier news, I've had a nice weekend. Went out for sushi with two good friends on Friday night, did a lot of laughing but also talked a little bit about upcoming match applications, since they're both lab animal people too. Saturday I did some cleaning of the apartment and went to the track in the evening. It was a perfect night to watch the ponies go, and I was in my "secret" (not really, just less well known) area where all the touristy people weren't crowding around. Today I managed to sleep in by putting a pillow over my head (the crows in my neighborhood are awful and wake me up every morning, grr), talked to Danny and then went out and bought myself a big poutine for lunch. I need to look over some radiology notes, as that's my next rotation come Monday morning, as well as clean the rest of the apartment but right now I'm having a nice time relaxing and reading the Stephen King book that my community practice clinician lent me last week (Eyes of the Dragon).

18 days until Danny gets here and four months until I go back for good :) Not like I'm counting or anything...

Lately I've been browsing a long distance relationship forum. There is always perspective to be gained from others' relationships, and I admit that seeing the obstacles that others have to overcome (that make my own seem so measly) comforts me in a way. At least he is not being deployed; at least we have already met and our families know about each other; at least there isn't an ocean and a staggering time difference between us. The fact that my husband is actually the perfect person for me and we don't have any issues aside from, you know, all those miles is just icing on the cake (barf bags to your left. Sorry.)

I have it so easy. Twelve hundred miles (a good chunk of which is beautiful landscape) and one international border with only mildly grumpy border guards is "all" that separates me from Danny. It helps that our entire relationship has been "in person" and that we spent the majority of our relationship "close distance" as they say. It helps even more than we've always been able to schedule visits with minimal fuss. And perhaps most importantly of all, there has always been an end date to it all. (The fact that there is now literally a Last Day in Canada - November 30th - is overwhelming to me in the best of ways.) I can't imagine trekking forward with an LDR with no definitive end to it. I have too many plans for my life, too many things I want to do with him.

The weekends are the hardest time for me. Two days of nothing sounds blissful when I'm in the middle of a week of any rotation and I'm tired and smelly and just want to read or cook a real dinner or go out with some friends. But when the weekend hits, I find myself aimless, drifting and lonely. There are certainly things that I can (and probably should) do. But more times than not, I leave those things undone and just kind of float through the hours doing a bit of this and a bit of that just to pass the time. Frankly, it's pathetic.

Many relationships are forced to become long distance with vet school. All but a scant few ended at one point or another. There is such a negative stigma attached to LDR, and while I can understand why it exists, I can't understand why anyone lets that stigma govern their choices. The distance has been tough, even tougher this year than the last and moreso than I expected for fourth year. But our relationship has gained a dynamic that I didn't know was possible, grown and matured entirely for the better. If you can survive the distance, it's not such a bad thing to have been through.

Major traffic on this blog the last few days. Not sure why it's spiked all of a sudden, unless more pre-vets are scoping out SDN in preparation for applying to vet school this cycle or something. Although applications opened at the beginning of June...? Ah, the mystery of the internet.

Speaking of pre-vets, I volunteered to talk to some at our university about fourth year. I'm not really sure what I'd ask a fourth year student if I had it to do over, though. In preparation for this event and to hopefully persuade any of the current influx of lurkers curious about vet school, I've decided to make a real post about being a fourth year student.

So what's fourth year like?

Well, it depends. All schools that I'm aware of have rotations, where you go through different services (for example: internal medicine, surgery, anesthesia, radiology, etc) for a set period of time (one week to four weeks seems to be the maximum per rotation). Rotations are kind of like working: you come in, you do your thang, you go home (sometimes with homework).

As an example, I'm on anesthesia right now. I get my case assignment either the night before or the morning of. I "work up" the case: I read the animal's history and try to talk to the clinician on the case, I do a physical exam, I read the blood work and I decide what drugs I want to give the patient. We have rounds every morning where we discuss all of these things with the head anesthesia clinician. Eventually I get my patient, give it pre-meds, place an IV catheter, induce the patient with more drugs, place an endotracheal tube and start the anesthesia. I monitor the animal and record values like heart rate, blood pressure, etc throughout the entire time the animal is anesthetized. Then I wake the animal up, make sure it's comfortable and go about my merry way.

My day would be really different if I were on large animal medicine, or radiology or whatever. The day to day stuff really depends on what rotation you're on. The basic gist is assignment of patient, diagnostic tests and interpretation of those tests, plan for that patient based on all of the information you have.

A question I get frequently is, "How do you like fourth year?" I do like it. It's a lot better than the first three years in that you aren't sitting on one place all day listening to people read off of powerpoints. You're in the clinic, hands-on and learning pretty much constantly. You get to build awesome relationships with your peers, even those who may not have been your closest friend during the classroom years. You get to interact with some great veterinarians (your future colleagues) that have so much knowledge and are eager to teach you. You get to interact with some wonderful clients who not only care about their pet very much but are also so gracious toward you as a student. Sure, not everyone is such a saint to be around but I've found that the good ones far outweigh the bad.

I guess the best thing about fourth year so far, aside from the amazing people and the huge amount of learning, is that I've been completely validated in my decision to become a veterinarian. I've been headed toward lab animal medicine from Day One of vet school, but it's such a good feeling to be doing "regular vet" things and still very much enjoying that aspect of the field even though it isn't what I plan to do. If I ever had to leave lab animal, I would absolutely put my degree to good use somewhere else in the field of vet med. And knowing that I've put so much time, effort, money and emotion into this career, it's good to know that I chose right.

Last night I drove up to the national park where I used to run all of the time, just past the little cottage I lived in for three years. I hadn't realized just how much I missed it out there until I was driving past the fields and along the coastline on a perfect summer evening. Sure, there are tons of tourists around right now but it was still so nice to drive alongside perfect views with my windows down and my hair misbehaving.

Living in town has had its advantages, no doubt about it. But there's just no comparison between living five minutes away from a breathtaking national park (and going there daily) and living in a little apartment just off one of Charlottetown's two main roads where people are loud and you don't have green fields to look out over.

Nature always makes me feel nostalgic. I think it's because deep down, I'm a wilderness kind of person. A little cabin in the middle of the woods on a mountainside with some horses, sheep, chickens, a couple of dogs, a sprinkle of kids and my one true love sounds like heaven on earth. Yes, I enjoy the convenience of the city, and I enjoy spending time downtown (back home, that is) doing stuff you can only really do in the city. But I feel pretty certain that when I get old and gray, I'm going to find me that little house in the woods and just hike and read and ride all of the time.

It also makes me miss Danny more. Driving home last night, all I could think about was what we would have done if it were just the two of us. We would've gone to the beach, had dinner and then wandered in the woods holding hands and talking about the time after, When I'm Done, that time that seems almost unreal because we've been waiting for it for so long. It seems almost unbearable right now because we're so damn close to our forever (I know that sounds cheesy, but I can't help it). As much of an adventure as vet school has been - as much as I've learned and grown as a person - I'm ready to go home. I'm ready for Thanksgiving with my family, for the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas where you're shopping and decorating and anticipating, not studying for finals before a huge drive home. I'm ready to get a house, have a garden, cook dinner every night and see Danny every day.

Even with all of the missing of home, the anticipation for the future...I'm trying to live in the moment up here. I still have to get through fourth year and all of the learning, ups and downs that comes with it. But I'm getting closer ever day.

I'm so close to surviving my first week of anesthesia. I can almost taste Friday evening when I get home and can stay up late reading because anesthesia doesn't require weekends! It's a steady rotation - a few cases each day with the same routine. I think it's been one of the most intense, though, because you're in charge of your patient under anesthesia. They need to be watched constantly and values recorded every five minutes. I get a fluttery panicky feeling when blood pressure goes too low or respiratory rate spikes. Having previous anesthesia experience in general practice has been immeasurably valuable - I'm confident placing catheters, hooking up monitors, giving drugs, restraining, etc. Nevertheless, knowing more has made me more nervous with it all, because I know what those numbers and beeps and squiggly lines actually mean in regards to the patient's life!

The rest of life is mostly background noise at this point. I miss Danny terribly despite being super busy all day, which hasn't been much of an issue before. I mean, I always miss him of course but it seems attacks of loneliness find me more frequently now, and even if I'm busy. I know it's only five more months up here until I can be home for good (and only five weeks until he visits!) but gosh can it be emotionally taxing. One foot in front of the other is all I can manage right about now.

Hurricane Arthur swept through last night. This about sums up my feelings on the matter:

Okay okay, it did get quite windy and a lot of people (including myself) lost power. But that was just an excuse for me to read more junk instead of anesthesia notes for Monday and go to bed at a decent hour. The power was back up this morning and I made a good sized breakfast and have been lounging in my PJs ever since. I think I'll go to the track to watch the ponies go this afternoon (was cancelled last night) instead of reading for anesthesia.

Speaking of my next rotation, I'm really going to miss community practice. On Thursday I spayed a cat and it went really well and on Friday we did a feral cat spay/neuter clinic and I got to spay two and neuter one. These two spays were really difficult: one was lactating and had a cystic ovary and the other was pregnant. Everything went well, it was just a little trickier than the simple one I'd done the day before. And although surgery still isn't my cup of tea, I feel a lot more comfortable with it having gotten to do three spays and a neuter by myself. So that's nice :)

In other news, Danny is coming to visit in a little less than six weeks, yay! I'm starting to think about stuff we can do over the long weekend - it'll be nice to finally see each other when the weather is good for a change (it's always winter in Maine when we meet up and invariably snows at least part of the time). Two more blocks to get through, first!

Give me a day off and look what happens...my blog gets a fresh summer make-over and I post two days in a row!

I guess I'm posting again because all this time off gives me plenty of time to brood. First, I started thinking about my personal statement or essay thing for my residency application. There's so much I want to say and so many different paths to take and I feel overwhelmed already, like it will be kind of flat and generic. And I don't want anything I ever right to be flat or generic but I'm afraid to break the mold and be too flippant or personal or story-teller-ish. Too much time off to brood, it seems...

Then I treated myself to a Real Book instead of the free crap that breeds in the dark recesses of iTunes. I bought The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green and I hated myself while I was doing it. Because deep down (okay, not deep at all) I really hate popular books. It makes me so mad that everyone flocks to certain books/series/whatever (that inevitably get made into a movie or are only known about because a movie was made of it) instead of wanting to read enough that they find their own books. I fully admit that I'm a reader. I could lie in bed or sit on the couch or on the patio or wherever quiet and read all day and/or well into the night. And I've done that many times. I consume books like people consume TV/social media. So when everyone crowds around a book/series and fawns over it and dissects it to death (Game of Thrones, Twilight, etc etc) I want nothing to do with that book or that series. Because I love feeling like, when I'm reading a book or have read a book, the story is mine (not like, about me, but my possession). That's why I don't tell people my favorite book (which is part of my favorite series of books), even though it's not some obscure thing; because the story and the characters and the feels are special to me.

Anyway, the funny thing about The Fault in Our Stars was that the main character feels the same way about her favorite book: she guards it and doesn't want to share it with anyone else. And then they included my favorite poem ever (The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams). So of course I felt a connection to this character (who is now embodied by an actress and a real voice and all that jazz) and this book and although I didn't find the book to be this amazing, earth-shattering read, I did like it. Only now I feel as though I need to go read something obscure.

I really shouldn't be allowed to have enough free time for this stuff to percolate...